Knowing What We Want: A Decent Society, A Civilized System of Justice & A Condition of Dignity

Human dignity as a value to guide criminal justice reform emerged strikingly in the 2011 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Plata. But with Justice Kennedy retired and courts generally reluctant to go far down the road to practical reforms, its future lies in the political realm shaping policy at the local, state, and national levels. For human dignity to be effective politically and in forming policy, we need a vocabulary robust enough to convey a positive vision for the penal state. In this essay, I discuss three concepts that can provide more precision to the potential abstractness of human dignity, two of which the Supreme Court has regularly used in decisions regarding punishment: the idea of a “decent society,” the idea of a “civilized system of justice,” and the idea of a “condition of dignity.” In brief, without a much broader commitment to restoring a decent society, and to civilizing our justice and security systems, there is little hope that our police stations, courts, jails, and prisons will provide a condition of dignity to those unfortunate enough to end up in them.

Prostitution Decriminalization Campaigns in the United States: Libertarianism or a "Decent Society"?

Recently, legislative campaigns to totally decriminalize the sex trade industry in a handful of U.S. states and the District of Columbia failed, but a look at campaign supporters and their arguments demonstrates that libertarian principles are mainly guiding their efforts. This article explores how libertarianism principles, when applied to the sex trade, could bring about severe and lasting harm to others, including sellers of sex, potential victims of sex trafficking to meet the new demand, and the general community. Philosophic principles of liberty have been incorporated by courts, which find that liberty is never absolute and requires a balancing test in order to create a "decent society."

Prostitution Decriminalization Campaigns in the United States: Libertarianism or a "Decent Society"?

Recently, legislative campaigns to totally decriminalize the sex trade industry in a handful of U.S. states and the District of Columbia failed, but a look at campaign supporters and their arguments demonstrates that libertarian principles are mainly guiding their efforts. This article explores how libertarianism principles, when applied to the sex trade, could bring about severe and lasting harm to others, including sellers of sex, potential victims of sex trafficking to meet the new demand, and the general community. Philosophic principles of liberty have been incorporated by courts, which find that liberty is never absolute and requires a balancing test in order to create a "decent society."

Diversity and Decency

George Crowder’s article makes an interesting contribution to the literature on value pluralism. Yet, as a commentary onmy essay (Polanowska-Sygulska, 2019c) it is entirely misconceived. Crowder’s reading of my text is inadequate, in terms of both the legal and the philosophical aspects of my argument. Having ascribed to me the belief that pluralism always favors cultural diversity against legal uniformity (a belief which I do nothold), he argues that a single uniform law may engender more value diversity than a multiplicity of local legal systems. This may indeed be so, but it is notmy concern. What Isaiah Berlin aimed at more than anything else was to bring about a decent society, which at times requires the pursuit of other values to be limited. I share his approach and therefore argue that, for the sake of decency, both value diversity and cultural diversity may sometimes need to be restricted.

The discreet charm of civility

Maria Márkus took special interest in the concept of civil society that was revived by East European dissidents and incorporated it into her account of the fundamental ideals of modernity. Modern societies were civil to the extent that they possessed a ‘public sphere’ that incorporated structures and mechanisms of action and communication able to form, articulate and press the interests and needs of the society on public agencies; and to defend them, if the state ignores or seeks to override them. This article discusses the relationships in her thought between civility, civil society and decency. She sees the first as a condition for the second, but not a part of it, while decency is both an accomplishment and attribute of a civil society in good shape. For her, a decent society is the ideal to strive for, a civil society the way to get there, civility a necessary step toward civil society, and therefore too for a decent one, but not a huge step. This article suggests that civility deserves more than the lukewarm approval Maria bestowed upon it. In particular, the piece tries in some measure to bridge the gap she saw between civility, on the one hand, which she appreciated in a kind of ‘two cheers’ way, and civil and decent societies, on the other, which received her full (and fully warranted) three-cheers.